Yesterday was Mother's Day. I woke up thinking how odd it was to be in my own bed.......on Mother's Day. I hadn't been in my own bed on this day for almost 20 years.
For all those past years, Lela, Blanche, Mother, my daughters and occasionally one or two of my sister's children had always been in the Ozarks. Osage Beach, Missouri to be exact. Boosting the economy.
There is a large outlet mall located there and we would spend every Mother's Day weekend, starting on Friday, pilfering through all the different stores.
Each evening we would drag all of our bounty into our hotel room, empty the sacks on the bed and show each other every item, even if it was a pair of socks.
On Sunday morning, Mother's Day, we would have breakfast, hit an antique store or two and then make the journey home.
As I laid in bed yesterday morning, I thought how very much I missed Mother. It will be seven years this September that she has been gone. She passed on my 51st birthday, which I think she did on purpose.
Mother most always kept a journal of some kind. It may have been a diary or, in her later years, a large calendar. She would laugh and say most of the days were filled with doctor appointments, but there was usually some little ditty, written in the square, about what she had done that day.
Not long after she had passed, I found her last calendar. As I flipped through the last couple of months, I was surprised at what I found in September. Mother's birthday was on the 4th, Lela's on the 6th and mine on the 8th. Easy dates to remember, if you weren't born in September, you were s.o.l. She had written each name in the correlating box, but when she wrote my name, there was a period behind it. I went back through the pages of the calendar and that was the only time she ever did that.
Mother knew her days were numbered, we all did, but she wasn't really ready to go. She had accepted it, but not because she wanted to. We were not ready either. Perhaps we never are.
Losing your Mother, regardless of what age you are, is like being sucked back into a time vortex. It makes you feel like a small scared child and the only thing that will make things better is your Mommy.
There were lots of reasons why we didn't go on our Mother's Day adventure this year, but it's never really been the same without Mom. On the other hand, it didn't feel quite right to stay home. Maybe we can resume this tradition next year, I'm sure Mom would like that.
Take time to talk to your mother. Make each visit with her special, not just one day out of the year. Life is short, try not to waste it, because the hand we are dealt can fold at any time.
If your mother was all kinds of bat crap crazy and you never want to see her again, at least take a moment and thank her for giving you a chance to make your own way in this world.
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